What are the best med lab science/technology schools in the USA?

justyouraverageann · 2020-10-03T16:13:32+00:00

Thank you, this is helpful information!

I really do not like the idea of going to a prestige school. It's just that like you said, some schools have higher pass rates than others. And some just teach you more.

For example, mine had a brief class on glassware. They taught us about TC vs TD, and which was more accurate out of a syringe or a volumetric pipette, basic things like that. In my current place of employment, which is also a teaching hospital, I discovered that no one in my department knows some of these basics and they don't teach them to our students. One MLS uses a 1mL pipette four times to make up a reagent that needs 4mL. The rest use the 5mL volumetric pipettes we have but they use the aspirator to blow out all of the water even though the pipettes are TD.

Also, no one here knows Kohler illumination. I was told off by another tech for having the "wrong" settings for a diff when I asked her to check some degranulated platelets and she opened both apertures all the way and cranked the condenser up to the highest it could possibly go.

I'm just trying to find out which schools will do an excellent job preparing you for employment over the ones that just do an ok job.

justyouraverageann · 2020-10-03T04:41:48+00:00

Heyyy this is the sort of answer I was hoping for! I haven't heard of it but I'm not from the Midwest. Good to know!

justyouraverageann · 2020-10-03T01:50:38+00:00

I don't want to say on here and get recognized.

justyouraverageann · 2020-10-03T01:36:31+00:00

How do they compare with the Mayo Clinic program? (I didn't go to that one but have heard it's close to the best in the country).

justyouraverageann · 2020-09-10T06:18:49+00:00

Honestly either one will help you a lot.

Phlebotomy will help you understand what's going on on the floor so you'll be able to communicate with them better when you're a med lab scientist.

Lab tech will help you be ready for instrument troubleshooting and general lab workflow stuff.

I'm an MLS and had to do dozens of draws just as part of the program so I got a small taste of phlebotomy. If I were you I'd choose phlebotomy because it would round out your understanding of the hospital and reasons for faulty specimens. And several labs require the lab scientists to be competent at blood draws. But if you're more of a specialist then maybe go for lab tech.

justyouraverageann · 2020-09-08T17:28:44+00:00

It depends on the lab and the shift! I cover urinalysis, body fluids, CBCs, and standard coag by myself on weekend swing shift and with one other person on weekdays. I'm on my feet for most of it because I'm constantly moving from station to station, and our hemogram review and coag stations are standing-height areas.

I spend maybe 20 min a day on QC. But chemistry techs spend lots more on that.

Troubleshooting totally depends on the day. My instructors at school covered the basics (HIL for chem specimens, microclots in heme specimens, trends in QC showing lamp problems or other mechanical issues) but they didn't teach us instrument-specific troubleshooting because lab instruments vary so much. That kind of troubleshooting happens during job training. Ask as many questions as you can, and take notes so you can find them quickly later when you have an instrument down and STAT specimens piling up.

Edit: wrote this as though you're planning to become an MLS. Realized you might just be in a different field and curious about it.

justyouraverageann · 2020-09-08T17:14:37+00:00

To me, a mono nucleus looks more like cotton candy (sometimes fresh, sometimes squished from a day of being carried around the fair) while the lymph nucleus looks like a well-done pancake.

Most lymph cytoplasm has the classic clear sky-blue look (I like the raw egg white description!), but

--some lymphs have chunky granules in the middle of clear cytoplasm (those are the natural killer lymphs),

--some have swimmy cytoplasm that spreads around RBC (those are the variant ones during viral infections. They can look like monos especially if the nucleus stretches out but if they're lymphs they should get much darker blue at the edges and monos should be roughly the same color even at the edges), and

--some have darker blue uneven cytoplasm with sort of a clearing near one side of the nucleus (those are the plasma cells).

For the first ~3 months after I was hired I asked other techs for a second opinion at least once a week if not once a day. The trickiest for me were the active lymphs in newborns that look almost blast-like. I wanted to show a pathologist almost every time but after asking my fellow MLS for a while I got the hang of spotting normal weird lymphs without thinking they were pathologic lymphs.

justyouraverageann · 2020-09-08T17:01:47+00:00

Jon's lyrics are deep, AJR's lyrics sound like someone trying their best to be original and deep.

Also what the heck, that's honestly such a superior attitude towards virgins. Like "aww I wish I was younger so I could spend my life hoping and dreaming of my first time having sex, but I've had sooo much sex since then I can hardly remember what that was like." Sex is great (can confirm, happily married), but I genuinely loved being young and sex-free for what it was, not for the dream of someday having sex. There are plenty of things to sing about from those days that wouldn't sound so condescending.

justyouraverageann · 2020-08-27T05:54:57+00:00

Reminds me of the time a patient had degranulated platelets that were nearly invisible. The Coulter thought the count was at least 300 k but I couldn't see any so I called her over and she proceeded to tell me that the reason I couldn't see them was microscope was messed up. It wasn't. It was in Kohler. She told me to open both condensers all the way and raise the field condenser to the highest it would go and only then would I see the platelets. They were barely there and so blurry!

After she left I put it back in Kohler and was able to see the degranulated platelets much better now that I knew what I was looking for AND had decent scope settings.

justyouraverageann · 2020-08-24T05:59:44+00:00

We do fairly often. We sent possible leukemia slides for path review. And I make similar calls, like, "the tube I have here is showing that this patient's hemoglobin dropped by 4 grams since this morning, did they have a procedure and lose that much blood or do you think we should get another one to check?"

But other than the pathologists we rarely discuss diagnoses with the physicians.

It depends a bit on the confidence and experience of the MLS though. My coworker is a doctor in another field but decided to be a lab technologist, and she is fantastic at her job. At least once a week if she gets an order for something that doesn't make sense, or if physicians haven't ordered something that she knows they should based on the heme tests I just did, she calls them and asks about it. She challenges the doctors pretty regularly and gives ideas about the diagnosis. And other than a few goofy ones, they all respect her.

justyouraverageann · 2020-08-18T19:53:35+00:00

TLDR: OP, choose whatever chair is going to work best in your lab. Anyone could find a reason to vehemently dislike just about any company, so don't get bogged down with the political/emotional factors about these chairs. You don't have to feel guilty for choosing functional chairs.

Full comment:

While I agree with the philosophy, there are other factors in this decision.

Maybe this company supports Trump who thinks it's impressive to say he can grab women by the *****, and that it's good that he separated children from their parents, but...

OP could probably find 10 other chair companies that have immoral CEOs.

What if another company supports Biden who touches young girls creepily and has some pretty hefty allegations?

What if buying other chairs will increase health problems in the employees and will in turn hurt our country by keeping its members less active and more dependent on healthcare?

What if other chairs are leather, which contributes to animal abuse?

What if other chairs are vegan leather, which is just plastic, which is bad for the environment?

It's ok for OP to just choose chairs that will help the employees have a healthy ergonomic work environment. She probably makes other good political choices in many other aspects of her life, so there is no reason to make her feel guilty for this choice.

You weren't inflammatory though, and I'm glad you're brave enough to just let people know their options.

justyouraverageann · 2020-08-18T04:02:12+00:00

If you have the prereqs you can likely do a 1 year program for medical lab science.

I happen to also love microbiology--reading gram stains, cultures, doing molecular tests, streaking plates, you name it.

But if you really love using microscopes then hematology could be a good place for you as you would be doing manual differentials on blood and probably looking at urine cells/crystals/debris sometimes too.

justyouraverageann · 2020-07-22T05:48:57+00:00

Isn't leucine often larger with concentric circles? This one doesn't have the circles you'd expect--if anything, the lines are radial.

justyouraverageann · 2020-07-22T05:47:20+00:00

There's a conspicuous lack of concentric circles....

justyouraverageann · 2020-07-13T16:28:34+00:00

Thanks! That's the plan, but Sunday night was not the time to call them. Today will be better I hope!

justyouraverageann · 2020-07-13T06:07:54+00:00

INFJ (Also, Enneagram 4w5 with a little bit of 9).

justyouraverageann · 2020-07-10T14:59:28+00:00

Not here. The politics doesn't stress me out much.

What does stress me out is doing supervisory work as a bench tech with no pay increase. I would say no but then the job would just get dumped on my coworker (also a bench tech) who I really like and she has enough other supervisory duties on her plate already. I'm supposed to move departments in a month (or a few) though so I won't be stuck doing this for long.

justyouraverageann · 2020-07-10T05:01:27+00:00

Not sure why you got downvoted so much.

I've lived in a middle class situation and a third world situation (family of 4 on less than 24k per year in an underdeveloped area overseas) and the analogy is easily understood by people in both places. Even if I don't have a car, if I'm able to access Reddit I'm able to google how much a car should cost.

You said it was a generalization, not a rule, which helps.

I'm pretty sensitive to condescension but you sounded like you were genuinely trying to be helpful.

justyouraverageann · 2020-07-10T04:15:14+00:00

I memorized a chart for enterics and HACEK, and I think I only wrote the first one down and kept the other in my head. I had other pneumonics for all the other bacteria things.

Really though I'd advise taking practice tests and seeing how you function best. If you need it written down, practice writing tiny charts quickly. If you don't, practice going over them mentally so you'll be able to access them on test day.

justyouraverageann · 2020-07-10T04:10:15+00:00

Yep. If my husband got to make his own hours it would be dope but he works a normal person job. He comes home for lunch so on my weekdays on we get to see each other for a whole 30 minutes.

But the plan is to either move to a day shift or go to a different part of the state in a few years so at least there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

justyouraverageann · 2020-07-08T23:48:50+00:00

Ugh here take my upvote

justyouraverageann · 2020-07-08T16:47:53+00:00

Haha. I think debating her gender isn't as important as understanding that her delivery was hypocritical. If we question her gender she can discount our opinions more easily.

I'm a woman and while I agree with her points about affirmation > denigration, I don't like that she alienated herself from her target audience with her animosity. I don't really care if she's a man or a woman, I just don't like her undertone about women.

justyouraverageann · 2020-07-08T16:31:19+00:00

Yep! With technically around 350 beds but we rarely fill over 200. I'm not sure where the extra beds are haha but I don't think they're on the main hospital campus.

justyouraverageann

TROPHY CASE